Why aren’t there playgrounds for adults?
This remark, made by Thomas Thompson to Laura and Laurent Massenat, went from chatter among friends to aiming to change Oklahoma’s arts culture in a matter of months.
For research, the trio met with Rick Erwin of St. Louis’s City Museum and reached out to Vince Kadlubek, CEO of the Meow Wolf collective in Santa Fe. They recruited Tammy Greenman, Kelsey Karper, Hugh Meade, and a group of Oklahoma artists, for what would become Factory Obscura.
SHIFT, an art installation at Current Studio in Oklahoma City, is the collective’s first exhibition. It spent six months in planning and construction and opened in November 2017. SHIFT visitors climb into, crawl through, listen to, and otherwise explore the work of a dozens-strong team of engineers and artists.
“Romy [Owens, Current Studio co-founder] and I have a range of experience with artists in Oklahoma. We know what kind of work they’re interested in making, and we knew the collective of artists had to be very collaborative,” Karper says. Factory Obscura first met in May 2017 to outline plans for SHIFT and explain their long-term vision.
“It’s definitely a new way of working that forces us to not only consider art-making but to mature in the busi
ness sense,” says Tiffany McKnight, a pattern designer and Factory Obscura artist. “For me personally, it’s really been a lesson in setting aside ego. It’s a return to when we first started learning about art. It makes it more fresh and new.”
You can see the shift in people, realizing, oh, this is what art can be.
“SHIFT is giving us a chance to work out the problems borne from working with a collective of artists. It helps us work on challenges at a small scale,” Laurent Massenat says. “Externally, it gives us a proof of concept to show to the population of Oklahoma City and beyond what immersive art is like and to be able to show to our future investors.”
Eventually, a permanent facility will open to the public, but until then Factory Obscura has plans to keep
the projects going in Oklahoma City. Similarly, the exhibition’s primary sponsor, Meow Wolf, founded in 2008, opened the large-scale permanent installation House of Eternal Return in 2016.
“Factory Obscura approached us with self-initiative and clarity. We also like them as people, and that informed our decision to work with them,” Kadlubek says. “We have interest in Oklahoma City, in possibly being part of a larger exhibition, but…it’ll be driven by what Factory Obscura wants to do.”
Tentative community-building plans include education programs in partnership with Oklahoma public schools. Meanwhile, SHIFT introduces Oklahomans to a completely different way of experiencing art.
“It’s not even so much about giving something new and cool to the arts scene. It’s actually creating work that is allowing us to come together and feel things,” McKnight says. “You can see the shift in people, realizing, Oh, this is what art can be.”
SHIFT is free and open to the public every Thursday through Sunday, 12pm–6pm until February 25 at Current Studio, 1218 North Pennsylvania Avenue in Oklahoma City.